GRA boss Kofi Nti fired

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The Commissioner-General of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), Mr Emmanuel Kofi Nti and two other commissioners have been fired, Daily Mail GH can confirm.

The other affected commissioners are Isaac Crentsil, commissioner for customs, and Kwasi Asante Gyimah, in charge of domestic tax.

Top government officials say Nti has been informed officially about the decision and has about a month to leave office.

“We keep missing our revenue target and that is not good for a government. There are so many leakages in the system and he’s not been proactive to block them,” a reliable source at the Finance Ministry told Daily Mail GH.

Nti, a Tax Policy Advisor, assumed office in February 2017.

PROFILE

Nti is a banker, economist, statistician, accountant and tax expert with experience spanning over 30 years. He holds a combined Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Statistics from the University of Ghana and a combined Master’s degree in Economic and Financial Forecasting from the London Metropolitan University.

He is a Fellow of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Ghana; Fellow of the Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants (ACCA); United Kingdom and Member of Chartered Institute of Taxation, Ghana.

He started his career as an Economist with the Bank of Ghana where he worked in the Development Finance, Rural Banking, Banking Supervision and the Treasurer Departments.

He left the Central Bank as the Head of the Treasury Information Statistics Office (TISO) of the Treasury Department where his work involved collaborating extensively with the Research Department, reporting on the foreign currency denominated receipts and payments through the Central Bank, the Open Position of banks, and the Central Bank’s Cash Flow.

He was the first Secretary of the Foreign Exchange Reserve Management Committee that manages the Central Bank’s investments and reserves.

He worked at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning as a consultant and was instrumental in the setting up of the Tax Policy Unit (TPU) in 2006 with objectives that include: providing a platform for developing and maintaining an effective tax policy making framework.

The TPU was tasked with providing alternative measures for growth and stability in government’s revenues; analysis of tax policy effects on different groups; building the requisite database and analysing the contents for policy formulation, conducting impact assessment and evaluation of tax policies.

The TPU collaborates extensively with the Ghana Revenue Authority which implements policies that are pioneered by the TPU.

Mr. Nti was the Head of the Tax Policy Unit at the Ministry of Finance from 2006 to 2012 during which period he spearheaded the formation of the Revenue Forecasting team composed of staff from the Ministry of Finance, Ghana Revenue Authority and the Statistical Service; introduction of the Communication Service Tax; creation of the Customer Services Unit of the then Internal Revenue Service; and reforming the Petroleum and Mining fiscal regimes.

Until recently he served as a Consultant Economist and Tax Expert, Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases Department of the World Health Organisation (WHO)

Africa Region, working from the WHO Office in Kampala, Uganda and then as resident consultant in Ghana.

In this role, he provided technical support on economic and taxation issues to Sub-Sahara African countries including amongst others, providing training on various areas of economics of tobacco, technical assistance in building South-South cooperation in the areas of tobacco taxation, health, and economic cost studies.

He has served as an adjunct lecturer at the Ashesi University and the Central University. At Ashesi, he taught final year Bachelor of Science (Administration) students in International Finance while at the Central University he taught International Trade and International Economics in the MBA programme.

He is married with four children.

Source: Daily Mail GH